It seems clear that the main issue Mitt Romney is going to use to try to reestablish himself as a moderate is immigration. He told a private audience on April 15 that "we have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party" and warned that current polling "spells doom for us." Then, on Monday, he made himself available to the media for the first time in a month—while standing beside Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a leading veepstakes name. …

And finally—art. Art is so underestimated in politics. Romney is just sooooo white. Even whiter than the Osmonds. Bush wasn’t that white. He came from a state where these days you can’t help but know some Latinos, and he spoke him a little esspanyole, even. But Romney? He fired some guys working on his lawn because he couldn’t afford the political liability of employing them, as he openly admitted at one of those GOP debates. Aside from that—well, I admit I’m no more up on the latest salsa artists than Mitt is, but do you think that guy has ever listened to one Tito Puente record in his life?

Do you ever get the impression that most national pundits don't know anything about Mexican-Americans, other than there are a lot of them?

Granted, nobody in NYC-DC knows from Puerto Ricans, but don't you think Tomasky (who is younger than I am) could at least have come up with a Latino musician younger than Tito Puente? How about Ritchie Valens of La Bamba fame? Sure, he's been dead for 53 years -- as long as Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper -- but he was still born 18 years after Tito Puente.

82 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Romney should get with Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66. It's latino music for rich white folks. Nothing says "life is good" more than cruising off Santa Barbara in the ol' Bayliner with old school Sergio cranking' out of the Bose, and a slow steady stream of Cuervo. Latin culture at it's best!

Most of today's Puerto Ricans have never heard a Tito Puente record either. They listen to Daddy Yankee, who takes the worst of black music (rap) and adds a little PR flair to it. Tomasky has probably never heard of him.

Tito Puento was obviously white. [In fact, the dude is so white that he looks more than a little Scots-Irish in those pictures - he could almost pass as a close relative of a Rodney MacDangerfield or a Jackie MacMason - were the Scots-Irish involved in the Triangular Trade in Puerto Rico?]

On the other hand, Arturo Sandoval looks like he might have just a smidgen of aboriginal [and/or escaped slave] blood in him.

Most of today's Puerto Ricans have never heard a Tito Puente record either.

Something similar would make a fascinating survey for African-Americans in the USA: Get Gallup or Pew to perform a large-scale [socio-economically/demographically well-balanced] poll to ask African-Americans questions such as:

1) What instrument did Miles Davis play?

2) What instrument did Milt Jackson play?

3) What instrument did John Coltrane play?

4) What instrument did Herbie Hancock play?

Heck, you could just as well throw in a few more recent fellows:

5) What instrument did Wynton Marsalis play?

6) What instrument did Branford Marsalis play?

And to make it even easier for them, the poll questions could be multiple choice:

A) PianoB) SaxophoneC) GuitarD) TrumpetE) Vibraphone

I doubt that even an Ivy League "graduate" like Michelle LaVaughn Robinson could do any better than random guessing [Barry, on the other hand, might be just enough of a nerd to actually know some of the answers].

PS: I wonder how many African-Americans could correctly answer the question, "Who was James Marshall Hendrix, aka Johnny Allen Hendrix?"

Within the under-30 age cohort [and even the under-40's], I bet that the results would be just shockingly low - maybe even statistically negligble.

Yes, the Scots-Irish were very involved in the slave trade. Google List of the oldest synagogues in the United States.You will find them in cities of note: Charleston SC, Newport RI, Savannah GA, New Orleans LA, even St Thomas VI.

When I lived in Charleston, I read Jews were heavily involved in the slave trade and 40% of Jewish households owned slaves, whereas only 5% of all southern households owned slaves.

Tomasky is relentlessly, remorselessly stupid. Every utterance from him is pure tripe, but he's a good indicator of the Conventional Wisdom and therefore serves a useful purpose, like a pregnancy strip.

It's a "safe" way to take advantage of the rising white racial consciousness without being called a racist. Of course, he'll be called a racist anyway because how dare he suggest that being white is good, but he can very legitimately roll his eyes and laugh it off.

Just something along the lines of "does the left wing media think there is something wrong with being white" on his campaign blog or something like that.

Tomasky himself doesn't seem to know much about the people he's so concerned with. He lumps all the different groups into one ball of wax. Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Cubans, hey what's the difference they all look alike. Mexicans might care about immigration issues, Puerto Ricans usually don't, certain politicians notwithstanding. Thinking the Cuban Rubio would appeal to Mexicans is just a part of this syndrome. Rubio probably looks like a Spanish plantation owner overlord to the Mexicans, which wouldn't inspire them very much.This all gets back to how election campaigns are just carefully scripted exercises in posturing and symbolism, the better to manipulate the emotions of the electorate. Do any of them actually believe in anything whatsoever or are they just hollow people reading off what their handlers put in front of them?

I hope Romney doesn't miss a golden opportunity this election season to pitt the average guy against Big Hollywood.

It was pretty amazing yesterday to see Obama squirm in that interview when he spoke of his now accepting gay marriage. Oh, I'm not saying that personally he's against it or for it, for that matter, but he seemed more ill at ease than at any other time I have seen him speak on a topic.

Clearly the big fund raisers he had coming up in NY and Hollywood, all with celebrities, was what made him "evolve" (although records show us he has evolved before on this issue.) Of course, the MSM failed to mention those fund raisers and failed to mention the arm-twisting and the threats that came from the GLBT leaders and their Hollywood allies.

If I'm a Romney strategizer, speech writer or whatever, I make sure to point out the 12 lane freeway between the Oval and HW.

I can't see anyone in the toss-up states disagreeing with the suggestion that those people have much too much power.

If Tomasky really believes having listened to Tito Puente permits escape from the "too white" charge, then why doesn't he ask how much Motown Romney's listened to? What if it turns out Romney can name every Four Tops album? Would that mean he's less white than Tomasky and the rest of the press corps?

Amusing clip. Murray's role was originally written for Cheech Marin, hence the Tito Puente reference (put in by a white screen writer) and the lazy Mexican persona of the lead actor.

To liberal white people, Mexican culture = Cheech & Chong. Most of my generation amused themselves on dull summer afternoons between 7th and 8th grade smoking weed they stole from their older sibling's underwear drawer and listening to Big Bambu. With weed, it was always funny, no matter how many times you played it. If the record began skipping, it only got funnier.

"Didn't Romney's grandpa live in Mexico for a while? If he were a liberal he would surely self-identify as Hispanic himself."

1. Per Census/OMB definition, Romney is Hispanic because he "can trace [his] origin or descent to Mexico..."2. Under the Mexican Constitution, Romney is a natural born Mexican citizen. But for the pesky 20 yr residency requirement, he could run for President of Mexico tomorrow."http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/10/mitt-romneys-foreign-policy-advisers.html?showComment=1318070838484#c2776156990994073701

"Do you ever get the impression that most national pundits don't know anything about Mexican-Americans, other than there are a lot of them?"

Well, of course they know next to noting about Mexican-Americans. They seem to think Puerto Ricans and Cubans are just like Mexican-Americans because they spend all their time in NYC and Florida.

The press, Hollywood--Romney needs to call them out for their provincialism. I'd love that because they all think they're so sophisticated but the isolation of the media and of leftist entertainers is that they are the more provincial of all of us. They spend such little time around average folk, be they average Americans, average UK residents, average Frenchmen, that they haven't a clue.

This is hilarious. Mitt Romney's dad was *born* in Mexico and lived their in his early childhood. This makes Mitt eligible for Mexican citizenship after two, instead of the usual 5, years residency. And has anyone under 40 listened to a "Tito Puente record" anyway? I think, in fact, that that activity is something a square like Romney would have done, perhaps as a freshman in college or in high school as a member of the pep squad. Why not at least Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin or someone else who was alive (let alone productive) during the 21st century? Bizarre.

fondatori, Romney's father George was born in Mexico making George a Mexican to the same extent that Mexicans born in the US are Americans (and everyone not on the 'far right' will tell you they are as American as you and George Washington, except more so).

Mitt Romney is the first Hispanic presidential candidate, and yet no one ever mentions that. Probably because they're racists, even though they don't think Hispanic is a race, or that races are anything but pretend. I guess a tall white Mormon man is less 'authenic' than fat little brown people practicing syncretic Catholicism..

Of course we all know that Mexicans in the US aren't Americans, and Americans in Mexico aren't Mexicans, but who'd want to lose his job pointing that out?

"Do you ever get the impression that most national pundits don't know anything about Mexican-Americans"

every day.

in fact, anybody who hasn't lived in (or these days, next to) a border state for a minimum of 3 years, knows nothing about mexicans and shouldn't open their mouth about them.

i'm a total novice compared to a guy like allan wall, the ex-pat who writes for vdare, yet i often feel the same way he does in his columns: these american politicians have NO IDEA AT ALL what they're talking about when it comes to mexico or mexicans. they're 180 degrees wrong almost always. they get it exactly backwards.

really egregious is how they conflate all groups with mexicans. dominicans, ricans, colombians, haitians, maybe even brazilians are all the same people. they don't seem to realize a lot of them don't like each other. saying something bad about ricans around mexicans won't upset the mexicans at all, and praising some rican musician in a bid to ingratiate yourself to mexicans is just going to make the mexicans scratch their heads.

Please, Mr Sailer, Selena is the obvious choice of a Hispanic musician to exploit. Her fun, nonthreatening lyrics give you multiple generational appeal. You and Mr. Tomasky think Hispanic voters are all 70 year old women or aging, educated males.

Romney should run a the the first Mexican-American presidential candidate. When asked to prove it, he can then run as the first *undocumented* Mexican-American presidential candidate, and attack all opponents as racists.

Moneyball... seen it finally... by Sorkin... of Social Network, an apologia of Jewish power... Moneyball is celebration of Jewish genius behind goy power. Jewish kid--'Peter Brand' as composite of 'high intellect' figures around Bean--saves the day and changes the world. And baseball is just a metaphor. Goy got muscle and charisma, but all is guided in the end by Jewish theory.

Well, it sure didn't work out for Wall Street and Iraq War, but Hollywood wanna give us stories where Jewish genius saves the day. This is not a sports movie but a Jewish power movie.

Tomasky can't come up with a current artist who's mainstream, hip and latino--at least I can't--so he pulls this out of his ass? Screw you, Tomasky! You don't know your Tito Puente from your La Puente!

Best thing for conservatives is a shit economy. It will slow down immigration and anxious Americans will turn culturally conservative. Starving people don't fret about such trivial issues as 'gay ass marriage'.

Tomasky himself doesn't seem to know much about the people he's so concerned with. He lumps all the different groups into one ball of wax. Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Cubans, hey what's the difference they all look alike.

This is yet another example of how the elite is basically inventing a pan-Latin identity that has never existed elsewhere. It's some warped spin on the one-drop rule, even though a lot of people coming from the south don't even have that one drop of "Hispanic". You could be 100% African descent, a cholo, a Maya, or a Lebanese-Italian Argentinian, but it's all "Latino". The bizarre fantasizing that amorphous cooked up this category is the great unremarked part of America's identity crisis. If there weren't AA goodies to be had, you wanna bet that all these disparate peoples wouldn't put themselves under such a tent?

Miles Davis played the trumpet. I only know because I read his autobiography.

Anyway, I obsess over music, go to lots of concerts and have about a billion songs in my collection, and the only Hispanic musicians I can think of are Zoe, Titan, Nico Stai, Fangoria and the sucky pop stars from the late 90s like JLo, Ricky Martin and Christina Agulera. Of course, there might be a whole lot of Hispanic people in my favorite bands, but they just don't care enough to bring it up and make it widely known. At any rate, I can't think of anyone who looks as obviously Latino as George Zimmerman.

anony-mouse said...If Mormons are so white, how come you never see a blond/light-haired male one?

5/10/12 6:09 AM

There was just recently that supporting character in the Three Stooges movie (supposedly he's Mormon-level famous). More of a bottle blonde but has light eyes.

Steve, the reason Tomasky thought Puente was Mexican is because of that Santana cover. But unfortunately "Oye como va" is the island dialect and musically sounds nothing like norteno/Tejano/banda (i.e. polka)/other Mex genres, lol.

Reggaeton is quite popular in eastern LA County but is a lower-class marker (sounds like the other produce of Mexican/S. American big music industry, basically). 2nd or 3rd generation Mexican-Americans youth often look down on it, veer instead to modern R&B (increasingly a melange of hip-hop & Euro-beat dance shlock) or weird 80s rock stuff. The further you go up US-101 the less you hear the Freddy Fender stuff too.

Has he ever heard of Cantinflas? BTW:One reason SNL became so popular was its cool ingroup humor. Chevy Chase made some joke once referencing Cantinflas ,which I found very amusing,as I had by chance stumbled upon his work one Sunday afternoon. Ditto for Aldo Rey. Who knew Aldo Rey?? By chance,having stumbled on Mailer's "Naked & Dead",I was familiar with Mr. Ray's work.

"If Mormons are so white, how come you never see a blond/light-haired male one?"

I know a Mormon young man who is a very light ginger. All the other ones I know personally seem to look kinda Celtic- brown hair of all shades, very light skin, rosy cheeks and light eyes. One girl is blonde and more Germanic looking.

It's so bleeding obvious that Obama's (nonbinding) papal indulgence of same-sex official victims was timed for the N.C. Amendment 1. They knew it would pass, they knew he might as well be seen as "letting it" pass but then denounce it on the other side (so brave to comment after the vote has happened). So now the fabled gay bundlers who are so critically important to the campaign (source: aforementioned gay bundlers) are prancing around after Jesus Christ II's latest miracle. Obama played them like a cheap Cartagena prostitute...

"If Mormons are so white, how come you never see a blond/light-haired male one?"

19th century Mormon evangelism was disproportionately successful in Scandinavia. The one Mormon girl who I went to school with was blonde/light complexioned and had an obviously German/Scandinavian name. She was from a big family all of whom were pretty much just obviously superior to the other kids around them. It probably has unfairly influenced how impressed I am by Mormons to this day. One of the South Park guys did an entire Mormon episode about his similar experience.

Romney's wife is also a blonde.

"Yeah but Tito composed an exculpatory mambo on an episode of the Simpsons! So there's that. "

Thanks, I had no clue who Tito Puente was until I read that. The "Señor Burns" song from the "Who shot Mr Burns?" episode snapped right into my head.

The bizarre fantasizing that amorphous cooked up this category is the great unremarked part of America's identity crisis. If there weren't AA goodies to be had, you wanna bet that all these disparate peoples wouldn't put themselves under such a tent?

It wasn't fantasizing; it was a deliberate part of a divide et impera/diviser pour régner/divide and conquer strategy.

Has he ever heard of Cantinflas? BTW:One reason SNL became so popular was its cool ingroup humor. Chevy Chase made some joke once referencing Cantinflas ,which I found very amusing,as I had by chance stumbled upon his work one Sunday afternoon.

Interestingly, while in Latin America, white guys are considered the catch for latinas. The status of being a white guy is immense, at least for the guys who are not the 1/3 of US population of land behemoths.

Only in America (and perhaps Western Europe) is being a "white" disparaged and made fun of.

Jody: "dominicans, ricans, colombians, haitians, maybe even brazilians are all the same people"

This business reminds me of something I heard Tina Brown (I think it was) say during the 2004 election: that John Kerry should promote his vibrant "Hispanic wife" Teresa to help bring out the minority vote. This is funny on two levels:

1. Teresa is Portuguese, which is not Hispanic;

2. She grew up in Mozambique when it was a Portuguese colony, and studied in apartheid South Africa. From the POV of black people, she was a "white oppressor."

Anon 3:58, one of the Post's "witnesses" to the "attack" has said he wasn't even there.

Anon 2:10, the Peter Brand character was in reality Paul DePodesta, not a Scots-Irish as far as I know. He wouldn't allow his name to be used in the movie, and the producers decided to go with a "composite" character base on Beane's assistants.

As I was raised by the Mormons, I feel qualified to say the above amateur ethnographic history is not only amusing, but totally wrong. Take a look at reported national origin in US Census data and you will see that Utah (about 3/4 of Utahns are of Mormon ancestry, whether or not they're active in the church) has extraordinarily high percentage of national origin from England (particularly the western counties) and Wales, with slightly higher than normal amounts from Scandinavian countries.

The overwhelming reason for this is that their earliest, and by far their most successful forays into international evangelism was to western England and Wales. A place that you could get to easily and filled with poor, English-speaking people ready to embrace the Homestead Act and the Book of Mormon, usually in that order. Most Mormon familes are made up of a mixture of old Yankee blood, English and Welsh that migrated between 1847-1890, and Scandinavians.

"Steve, Romney's real crisis isn't the whiteness, it is the violence against gays. There are five witnesses to his gay bashing."

Really? What I heard was that Mitt was shocked, SHOCKED, at the tackiness of Johnny's long hair. Mitt said,"Hey girlfriend, what you need is a Vidal Sassoon bob." Then he whipped out his trimming scissors and hair product and got busy.

Romney or his people should just mercilessly tease Tomasky. "I'm white, huh? We should hire you as a whiteness consultant for the campaign. You can stand behind me and tell me who's white or not. If you do that well, by the time I'm president, you can move up to estimating how tall people are.

Really, having the Democrats point out that the Democrats ain't the party for white people is the best thing that can happen to the GOP: they won't do it themselves, and it'll turn out more GOP voters.

Two great 60s rock bands were mexican-americans. ? and the Mysterians (96 Tears) were mexican-americans from Michigan, and the Sir Douglas Quintet (She's About A Mover)were Texas mexican-americans with an anglo frontman (Doug Sahm). The Sir Douglas Quintet was trying to cash in on the british invasion and had the band backlit on their first album cover so you couldn't discern their ethnicity.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.